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Our home track Pit Lane 2

Last time I explained that we had made a Pit Lane that was OK but we felt we could improve on it. We had two lanes – one alongside the

The Pit Lane as it was.

garages for refuelling and one next to the Pit Wall for serving ‘drive-through’ or other penalties. At one end there was a Parc Ferme and at the other a Safety Car garage. The Scalextric garages and our own Pit Wall sections gave it a sense of realism and would allow for the extra detail of figures – pit crews, engineers, corporate guests on the balconies etc. etc.However, there were 2 ways in which we felt it was bit unrealistic. Firstly, all six cars had to go through one lane for refuelling; and, secondly, with the two lanes as close as they were we could put Pit crew by the garages but not on both sides of the car so we wondered if we could find a way to solve that.

In fact that second issue turned out to be the easier one to solve. We realised that Radius 1 curves would produce a tighter turn so carefully marking and cutting a couple of those to use the inner, tighter one of the 2 lanes and then putting them together to make an S we were able to get the 2 lanes further apart. See picture below.) We repeated it for the other end and were delighted (if surprised) that the gap it left could be filled with the usual single lane straights and a Short Straight (79mm) cut down the middle to make a single lane one. (We may have needed to trim some of the connector pieces to join the curves together – I don’t honestly remember now – but it wasn’t difficult.) This of course left a hole in the middle which needed filling with some suitably shaped wood but by laying it under the new track formation you can draw round the inside of the track and mark the shape the wood needs to be. And the gap just left room for some Pit crew to be positioned in between the 2 lanes as long as they weren’t too close to either end!!

So the remaining question was “Can we avoid all cars having to travel through the same ‘garage’ lane?” But that will have to wait for the next post.

Overview of version 2 of the Pit LaneClose up of the R1 curve inner lanes